


Organs Of Extreme Perfection and Complication

by rude_not_ginger



Category: Orphan Black (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, sherlock rarepair bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 21:24:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1832773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where there was only one Woman to Sherlock Holmes, there was only one to Mycroft.  They met only a handful of times over their lives, but the result changed Mycroft forever.</p><p>This is the last of their meetings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Organs Of Extreme Perfection and Complication

"Do you remember her?"

Irony was not something that ever escaped Mycroft Holmes. It was the day following his conversation with Sherlock that he received the message. The request for an international appointment. There weren't many people in the world that Mycroft would leave the country for, much less at a moment's notice.

She was aware that she was the exception.

"Book the flight. Be discreet."

Within 24 hours he was standing in front of a dingy motel just outside of Toronto. He _loathed_ Canada. There was nothing even remotely politically interesting above New Mexico, really, but Canada was even worse because it was always so annoyingly cold.

He couldn't really understand why she came here. It had to do with the girl, he knew that. Sherlock would always say that Mycroft was never wrong, that he could deduce far better than anyone on the planet if he weren't so insistent on staying within his office. It was true, Mycroft supposed. It made most people boring, easily understood by a wrinkle on the trouser leg or a scuff on the shoe. It made them tools for advancement. Goldfish.

Everyone except her.

He wore no tie. She did not like ties, and he was aware of this. All the same, not having the complete suit felt like he was without his armor. Naked in front of someone he had always felt vulnerable around.

"Hello, Mycroft."

She was behind him. He should have anticipated this, but for some reason he didn't. He had seen her Canadian license, he knew what she looked like now, but it was different, seeing her in the flesh.

Her hair was coarser, longer. She no longer dyed it bizarre colors, no more pinks and greens streaked amongst the brown. Gone were the torn fishnet stockings, the tight leather skirts. She gave them up when she started taking in foster children, but he would occasionally see her in the CCTV cameras, a day on her own, the Irish punk he remembered back again. But those were the early 1990s, before she left.

Her eyes were the same. That clear, striking blue that was tinged with anger. He would think about her eyes sometimes. Sentimentality, of course. He never bothered deleting anything from his mental archives, because, unlike Sherlock, he never needed to make new space. But her eyes---he would have deleted them if he could. To focus.

"You've lost weight," she said. "About time. A waistline suits you."

He, for his part, did not shuffle awkwardly, nor did he appear at all perturbed by the half-compliment. "And you your way, or so your message stated," he said, tersely. It was important to stay on topic around her. She was someone to be easily taken with.

"Oh, come on, love," she said, offering up one of her crooked smiles. "I can still tease you." He remembered those smiles from his youth, from staring out the window at the pink-haired girl, gesturing at him to leave and cause some sort of trouble somewhere. He never did, of course. By the time he found the courage to leave his home on his own, there was Sherlock to take care of. And his mother didn't approve of her, of course. She was trouble. Dangerous girl, bad family. His mother never specifically spoke of classism, but it was and always would be a prevalent part of their lives.

"What is it you need, Mrs. Sadler?" he demanded.

She took a step towards him, reaching up to adjust his collar. Her nails were dark brown. A subdued color for her. She hadn't slept in a little over 27 hours. The last thing she ate was half a hamburger and two fingers of whisky.

"Are we doing last names now, Mr Holmes?" she asked, her voice a soft Irish burr. "Because I don't think you'd fly halfway across the world for someone you barely know."

He had always been able to read where she was, or what she'd done. She would pass him in the street, and he could read the tryst she'd had in the alleyway by the height of her skirt and the markings on her thighs. She could glance at him as he drove past her, and he could read nights up with her foster children, vomit and fevers. What he could never read was intent. He could read it in others, but never her. She was always a mystery.

Her finger brushed his throat as she turned his collar outwards. They had only touched twice before, in his memory. A night of drinking after he had returned from university, and the only time he allowed himself to become truly and properly intoxicated. He held her hand as she pulled him into the next bar, and she touched his face as they danced. He had never been so close to her as he was that night, and he never would again.

They touched once more, years later, but it was under dramatically different circumstances.

It was not that he was inexperienced to sexual touch. Unlike his brother, Mycroft was aware of the social necessities of romantic and sexual relationships, and would cultivate them when it was appropriate. He held a girlfriend at university, then had a series of spotty relationships at his first position, and so on. At his current level, romance was considered more of a deterrent, so he simply shied away. Appeared to focus on work, when really no one interested him. No one but the Irish punk rocker who had left the country years before, and with whom he had only shared a handful of conversations.

When she left with her family, he sat in his flat, drinking quietly. Thinking. Regretting for only three hours, before purging that emotion from his body. (Sherlock, a teenager at the time, rolled his eyes and informed Mycroft that he barely knew her. It was a statement Mycroft would throw back in his brother's face many years later.)

To her, he imagined he was a foreign entity. Something unlike the boys she slept with and the men who courted (if one could even call it that) her. She preferred her men wild and free, he preferred his mind uncluttered. They would, of course, never be together. He held no illusions as to that. And this was, at its heart, business.

"Flirting doesn't appeal to my nature," he informed her.

"No," she replied, a smirk on her lips. "But you like it."

She released him and took a step back. Giving him space. It felt as though she pulled air with her, but Mycroft was very aware that it was only sentiment allowing him this illusion.

"I need to get away," she said. "Back to London. With protection."

Doable. She could be escorted back to London as a political figure, set up safely. Mycroft had done this before, and it was easy enough.

"Just you?" he inquired. She arrived in Canada with her two foster children. Mycroft knew she left because of them, but he didn't know why.

"Me and a little girl," she said.

"Sarah must be twenty-nine by now. Or would it be for---" He untucked the notebook from his pocket. "---Kira? You've been her guardian for over a year."

Her eyebrow raised. "I didn't know you knew her name."

He snapped the notebook shut and placed it in his pocket. "Yes, you did."

The smile on her lips returned. "Yes, I did."

He often wondered how much she knew about him. He followed her life extensively. Work within political factions, dangerous people with big dreams. Fostering children who were in danger. Trying to live a normal life. He even followed Sarah, her foster daughter, for a brief amount of time. Her life was considerably less interesting, full of petty crimes and abusive boyfriends. Sarah was back here, he knew this. Sarah back, and now she was running.

"Who from?" he demanded. "Because, Mrs. Sadler, I know you would not contact me if you were not certain you needed my level of help."

"Well, Mr. Holmes," "she said, taking a step towards him again. "I can't tell you that."

"You should," he warned her. "If I don't know who I'm hiding you from, I can't acquire the minimum but necessary amount of protection." Necessary for efficiency, minimum for delicacy. She would remain hidden. Her and Kira.

She remained silent, at first. It was not the first time he faced off against her stubbornness. He could remember the first time, even now. Both of them aged twelve, her trying to break in and steal his mother's car, he attempting to defend the Holmes' property. She had a baseball bat, he had himself and his ego. At the time, he knew very few other people. She was a newcomer to his world, someone unlike anyone else. A rebel, a vicious teenager. That day, she broke his right arm, he gave her nose the slight bend to it that it still has. His mother's car remained unmolested.

She fascinated him ever since. He has never been so dense as to believe he had the same effect on her.

"The Dyad Institute," she said, finally. "Aldous Leekie. They want her."

Mycroft had heard of the Dyad Institute. A powerful pharma group, they owned a lot of people he worked with. They also owned part of several newspapers in London, including one that was very important to Mycroft.

"They work with Magnussen," he said, voice cold, quiet. "I can't interfere."

"Charles Augustus Magnussen?" she replied, voice tight. "Big papers, big stories. So? They can't have anything on you, Mycroft. You're bulletproof."

So she had been paying attention, of course she had. No matter what his mother believed in regards to class, she was so observant, if not nearly as intelligent as the Holmeses. And resourceful, she knew who to ask about what information. And still so very difficult to read.

She tilted her head to the side. "Sherlock, then? Has he got something on your brother?" She let out a short laugh. "The brilliant death-defying detective, still being protected by his older brother."

She knew what Sherlock was to Mycroft. The first time he heard from her in nearly twenty years was the day after Sherlock's 'suicide'. She had called his office---not even he knew how she got the number---and left a voicemail, apologizing for his loss, offering to fly over if he needed someone. He didn't reply, he thought she might recognize the falseness of his grief. He could not fake a broken heart, and that is what would have happened, had the stories been more than fairytales.

"Are you ever going to let him grow up?" she snapped. "Stand on his own? I _need_ your help. Kira needs your help."

Mycroft's voice was delivered cool. An uncompromising voice of authority. "A nine year old I don't even know is hardly worth guilting me over, Mrs. Sadler."

" _Mycroft_ ," she said. "Don't do this to me again, not over him." 

He had the odd sensation of _return._ A return to the past. Her voice had deepened with age, but it was still her. Still the girl he knew, the one who came to his flat, two foster children in the car, and asked for passports. Anything, just to get them away. He acquired them immediately, of course. Created identities for them. Prepared her a house in Toronto.

 _Create one more,_ she had said, then. Her hand reached out, fingertips to his wrist. Her skin was warm. She didn't explain what she wanted, she just touched him. He had never told her of his attraction, and he had never expected it to be reciprocated. He was simply not what he assumed would be her type.

Sherlock was asleep in the room next door, he had told her. Drugs---it was---he needed to get his brother clean.

 _He needs to grow up on his own,_ she had said. _Come with me._

He didn't. He did stand there with her for what felt like a very long time, _wanting_ to. And then she was gone.

She would be gone again, now. She turned from him, not bothering to hide the disgust and disappointment from her face. They were both getting older, and if another twenty years went by before they saw each other, he might never see that punk girl again.

"Siobhan," he said, this time extending his hand. "I want to help you---"

She turned quickly, suddenly, and leaned up to press her mouth to his. Just once, briefly, as though trying something she wasn't certain she'd like. It was over so fast, Mycroft had no chance to properly comprehend it.

"I don't blame you," she said, quietly. "And I'm glad you came."

She stepped away, and then further, and into the shadows of the hotel. He could see her destination in her stride, but not her intent. Desperate enough to call an old acquaintance from half a planet away, but not desperate enough to beg. It was astounding, how quickly she could just walk out of his life again. Gone, never to be seen, no matter how hard he looked.

He would allow himself the three hours it took to drive to the airport to regret, and then he would purge it from his system. Focus on his work rather than Siobhan Sadler's blue eyes.

After all, he could see what would happen, even if he didn't see intent. She would survive this.

He was never wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sherlock Rarepair Bingo on Tumblr.


End file.
